Lives of over 250 people involved in history of cinema

Everything about the how as well as the why of studying audiovisual Shakespeare is provided here, from silent cinema to the multiplex, and from cat's whiskers to Youtube.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A biographical guide to the earliest years of moving pictures, 1871-1901.

In this vivid and accessible new account of the dawn of film in Britain, internationally respected film historian and curator Bryony Dixon introduces us to Britain's first cinematic pioneers – an eclectic mix of chemists, engineers, photography enthusiasts, fairground showmen and magicians – who in a few short years built a vibrant new industry. As she chronicles the emergence of the first embryonic film forms and genres, she reveals often surprising innovations, from cutting-edge science to ingeniously witty tricks and comedies, with filmmakers reflecting existing entertainment forms as well as advancing editing and cinematography in ways that shaped the art of film for many decades after. Dixon offers fresh insights by focusing on the films themselves – many of them only recently available to view – while building on the work of generations of scholars. In the process, Dixon makes a compelling case for the British filmmakers of the era as inventive and creative figures, every bit as influential as their more celebrated contemporaries in France and the US.

“860 glittering pages” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times): The first volume of the full-scale astonishing life of one of our greatest screen actresses—her work, her world, her Hollywood through an American century. Frank Capra called her, “The greatest emotional actress the screen has yet known.” Now Victoria Wilson gives us the first volume of the rich, complex life of Barbara Stanwyck, an actress whose career in pictures spanned four decades beginning with the coming of sound (eighty-eight motion pictures) and lasted in television from its infancy in the 1950s through the 1980s. Here is Stanwyck, revealed as the quintessential Brooklyn girl whose family was in fact of old New England stock; her years in New York as a dancer and Broadway star; her fraught marriage to Frank Fay, Broadway genius; the adoption of a son, embattled from the outset; her partnership with Zeppo Marx (the “unfunny Marx brother”) who altered the course of Stanwyck’s movie career and with her created one of the finest horse breeding farms in the west; and her fairytale romance and marriage to the younger Robert Taylor, America’s most sought-after male star. Here is the shaping of her career through 1940 with many of Hollywood's most important directors, among them Frank Capra, “Wild Bill” William Wellman, George Stevens, John Ford, King Vidor, Cecil B. Demille, Preston Sturges, set against the times—the Depression, the New Deal, the rise of the unions, the advent of World War II, and a fast-changing, coming-of-age motion picture industry. And at the heart of the book, Stanwyck herself—her strengths, her fears, her frailties, losses, and desires—how she made use of the darkness in her soul, transforming herself from shunned outsider into one of Hollywood’s most revered screen actresses. Fifteen years in the making—and written with full access to Stanwyck’s family, friends, colleagues and never-before-seen letters, journals, and photographs. Wilson’s one-of-a-kind biography—“large, thrilling, and sensitive” (Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Town & Country)—is an “epic Hollywood narrative” (USA TODAY), “so readable, and as direct as its subject” (The New York Times). With 274 photographs, many published for the first time.

Are you an art-movie buff or a blockbuster enthusiast? Can you reel off a list of New Wave masterpieces, or are you more interested in classic Westerns? Most of us love the movies in one form or another, but very few of us have the all-round knowledge we’d like. 30-Second Cinema offers an immersion course, served up in neat, entertaining shorts. These 50 topics deal with cinema’s beginnings, with its growth as an industry, with key stars and producers, with global movements—from German Expressionism to New Hollywood—and with the movies as a business. By the time you’ve worked your way through, you’ll be able to identify the work of George Melies, define auteur theory or mumblecore in a couple of pithy phrases, and you’ll have broadened your knowledge of global cinema to embrace not only Bollywood but Nollywood, too. All in the time it takes to watch a couple of trailers.